


The Crown (An Extra)

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [27]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Eventual Fluff, M/M, Marriage, Precious Stones, Story: The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, Story: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22199551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: I never have time to write Christmas stories during the actual Christmas season. But I felt like "Missing Pages" should have a Christmas story, even if it doesn't really fit with the arc.It's Holmes and Watson's first Christmas Together, and "The Blue Carbuncle" has just been published. But Watson's preoccupied with some sadder news...until Holmes starts talking to him about jewels.
Relationships: Mary Morstan & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Missing Pages [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/988086
Comments: 39
Kudos: 94





	The Crown (An Extra)

**December 26, 1891**

I open this journal once more, not to record an adventure, but to impress a memory upon my heart. I wish, for the moment, that I had in my hands something more lasting than pencil and paper. In that dream world of which I can now sometimes catch the occasional glimpse, where everything is as one's heart desires it, this would not be a sheaf of paper but a copper plate on which to etch an intricate design, or marble in which to chisel an ideal form. But I belong to the humble world of mortal flesh and its immortal diseases, and must work with the tools within reach of my hands.

Late in the afternoon of the twenty-fourth of December, I struggled up the stairs to our sitting room, weighted down with brown-paper parcels and nearly strangled by a garland of greenery that I had rather impulsively purchased without thinking about how I would carry it home. I knocked the snow and slush from my boots, staggered into the sitting room, and dropped the parcels anyhow onto the settee. I next set about freeing myself from the twelve feet of pine needles that were coiled uncomfortably about my neck and shoulders. Having disentangled myself, I took up the slippery, whispering thing in both hands, intending to arrange it over the mantel. My eye caught the china tray onto which Holmes has the bad habit of carelessly piling our incoming correspondence. Peeping from amongst the half-penny holiday cards was a sealed, oblong envelope. I could not see the address, but the paper was the shade of pressed lilac.

The garland slithered from my hands onto the hearth-rug. I stood quite still for several moments. Finally, since Holmes was out, it was I who had to tell myself that I was making an error of logic. Because Mary had been in the habit of writing her love letters to me on lilac note-paper, it did not follow therefrom that anything written on lilac note-paper was a love letter from Mary.

I drew the lilac envelope carefully from the pile. It was addressed to me, in Mary's clear and confident handwriting. It contained an enclosure.

I pushed a parcel of Christmas crackers aside and sat down slowly on the settee. I tore open the envelope and drew out the folded sheets within. I transcribe the text of the covering letter below.

_My dear John,_

_I must begin with an apology for my delay in writing to you. Violet has gently hinted to me, several times, that this season of happiness might be an opportune moment to keep that promise to write that I so blithely made to you as we parted in Cornwall. I confess to a sense of restraint which has prevented me thus far. No one could have wished to make me happy more than you did. I imagine, foolishly perhaps, that even now it might still hurt you to hear that someone else is succeeding where you could not. But perhaps I am wrong. I have read your latest adventure in the_ Strand _, and it has told me much about your own happiness; and I feel no bitterness or regret. So know, dear John, that I_ am _happy in Walsall with Violet, and with the dozens of lonely and homesick girls whose minds we do our best to develop._

_I am afraid, however, that glad tidings are not the main burden of my song. I write to you on behalf of the Society, and with news that will be most unwelcome to you. It was Sutherland who undertook the investigation you commissioned--and far more capably than anyone would have credited. The Society agreed, however, that I should communicate to you the unhappy results. They believe you will bear the news better if it comes to you from me. You must remember, John, that many of them were with me while I tended you during your illness, and do not understand our current situation. Everyone in our Society knows women who remain married, year after year, to men for whom they have less affection and regard than I still cherish for you._

_I myself wish they had simply submitted Sutherland's report to you directly, instead of prolonging the suspense by trying to soften the blow. In brief, then: Miss Mary Holder died on the 3rd of December, in Chelsea Women's Hospital, at half-past four in the afternoon. I enclose Sutherland's final report, which contains the painful details. That beryl coronet notwithstanding, I truly believe that Miss Holder is with the angels._ _Violet wishes me to convey to you her fervent hope and prayer that Sir George Burnville may soon be in Hell._

_Please give my regards to Mr. Holmes and my love to Mrs. Hudson, and remember me to Harrison when you see her and Percy. In spite of this ghastly news, please do accept the compliments of the season. Do you remember that sad, dusty little garland I bought for our first Christmas at home? I see now that my notions of domestic economy were rigid and extreme. They were those of a friendless orphan who was brought up next door to penury. Violet has taught me extravagance. I hope Mr. Holmes has done the same for you. I like to imagine your Baker Street sitting room festooned with pine boughs and positively bristling with holly and mistletoe._

_Wishing you joy this Christmas-tide,_

_Mary_

With a heavy heart, I turned to Sutherland's report. It was indeed quite professional. It informed me that through the society papers Sutherland had traced Sir George Burnville's movements back to the fateful night last winter when Miss Mary Holder helped that scoundrel steal the the beryl coronet. Sutherland had methodically visited the scenes of Burnville's old debauches and past revelries, inquiring in her unobtrusive way about the company he had been seen to keep. She learned that Miss Mary Holder had indeed flown with Sir George Burnville after the missing beryls were recovered--at first, to the Riviera, where for a month she no doubt enjoyed all the glittering pleasures available to the mistress of a debased rogue who suddenly finds himself with three thousand pounds of someone else's money in his pocket. Upon returning to London, Miss Mary Holder was passed--let that word draw a veil over the loathsome details of a loathsome transaction--to a gentleman friend of Sir George Burnville's, and then to another. Then, finally, to a woman who offered Miss Holder room and board--and, inevitably, the only employment available to a young and pretty woman with no money, no character, no connections, and no family.

Miss Sutherland adopted a disguise and insinuated herself into the madam's den. There she found a young woman answering Mary Holder's description--lying in a nightdress in a filthy back room, dehydrated from vomiting and delirious with fever. Through the intercession of the Society, Miss Holder was removed to the Chelsea Women's Hospital. Her consumption, and other diseases, were far advanced. The nurses kept her clean and comfortable; but she sank, and five days later her sufferings were at an end. As our unfortunate client had succumbed to his grief the previous summer, it was his son and heir Mr. Arthur Holder who made the funerary arrangements, and was Miss Holder's chief and inconsolable mourner. The sole note of comfort in Sutherland's report was that, though Miss Holder was very far gone when Mr. Holder arrived, she did know him, and they reconciled. She died in his arms. 

I stuffed the letter and the report into a pigeon-hole in my writing desk, and went to work on tidying and decorating the sitting room. I had, I fear, entirely lost my Christmas spirit. It did not return, even when I had succeeded in snaking that extravagant garland over, amongst, and around everything in the sitting room that abutted its walls--from the sideboard to the mantel to the tantalus and the gasogene. My time in the Army had given me a distaste for physical violence. I would have preferred it, for instance, if Holmes could have resolved Miss Sutherland's case without actually horsewhipping her stepfather--and not only because we then had the trouble of blackmailing him into dropping the charges. I cannot truthfully say that I have never resorted to fisticuffs at a moment of crisis. I can say, however, that until I met Sir George Burnville, I had never left the print of my knuckles on the face of a peer of the realm. 

I was seated in my old armchair by a crackling fire, reading an evening paper and smoking myself into a better state of mind, when I heard Holmes's footstep on the stair. I heard him come in, but did not look up from the sensational item I was reading. It is a little luxury that I sometimes allow myself to savor: taking him for granted. He took just as little notice of me; it was the twelve feet of evergreen that commanded his attention. I heard him lift his pipe from its rest upon the mantel, and shake a handful of tobacco out of the Persian slipper. He tamped the tobacco down and searched for matches in the litter on the mantel. Not finding any, he took up a loose sheet of writing paper and began rolling it into a spill.

"Watson," he said, absently, as he lit the end of the spill at the fire. 

I looked up at him over the edge of the paper. "Yes, Holmes?"

Holmes at once fixed his sharp eyes upon me. His hand, automatically moving to light the pipe, had arrested itself mid-gesture. The end of the spill burned, unattended, in midair. 

"Oh my dear fellow," he said, removing the pipe from his mouth with one hand and tossing the spill into the grate with the other. "Was it _very_ bad news?"

My eyes were dry, my tone carefree; no traces of the anger this morning's anger could possibly remain upon my face. How, then, did he know? How did he always know?

Holmes was already at my writing desk. "May I?" he said, gesturing toward the pigeonhole into which I had crammed the offending documents.

"You may as well," I sighed, with a shrug. Holmes extracted the ball of paper and sat down at my desk. I returned to the day's old news, feigning indifference. I heard him gently smooth out each crumpled page with his fingertips, then turn it over and reach for the next.

"Ah, Watson," he said, laying down the final page. "I feared as much."

I closed the newspaper with a snap. "Indeed, you predicted as much."

Holmes stood to replace his pipe upon the mantel. He did not enter into the lively disputation I had expected. He simply bent his head and stared into the fire, one elbow leaning on the corner of the mantel. The flames crackling in the grate illuminated his features with sinuous, rippling strokes that no painter's hand could equal.

"This is one of those occasions," said Holmes, "when I take no pleasure in being proved right. Surely you know that."

I heaved a sigh. Holmes drifted toward me. One of his hands came to rest, gently, tentatively, upon the top of my head. I was vexed to feel my throat constricting.

"And for what?" I said, bitterly. "For three bits of colored glass."

"Well, one must remember, Watson, that he was playing for the whole crown."

"And that makes a difference?"

Holmes quietly folded himself up and sat down, cross-legged, at the foot of my armchair. The firelight danced, reflected, in his upturned eyes. 

"To Sir George Burnville, undoubtedly," he replied, sadly. "He is one of those to whom a jewel is simply a highly concentrated form of currency."

"Whereas, to you," I began.

"Whereas, to me..." He took up the hand I had just rested on my knee, interlacing his fingers with mine. "Three gems or thirty-six or thirty-nine, what does it signify? The beauty, the history, the romance of each jewel is unique. It cannot simply be...multiplied."

I gave him my other hand. He continued to gaze at me with eyes liquid with longing. But a new note crept into his voice.

"I had the opportunity to peruse the Strand's Christmas number today, at last," he said.

I leaned back in my chair, withdrawing my hands and folding my arms.

"And?" I said, bracing myself.

"I enjoyed it tremendously," he said. 

I sat up straighter.

"You did?"

"Of course. It's...more than usually accurate, and entirely charming."

I could not quite believe what I was hearing. 

"You liked it, Holmes?" I asked, point blank.

"Watson," he said, "I did."

I let this hang in the air for a moment, with the firelight and the crackle of the flames.

"Oh my dear, dear, darling man," said Holmes, softly. "I have always admired your stories."

"Always?" I said, incredulously. "Then why--invariably--"

Holmes raised one of my hands to his lips.

"I was afraid."

I leaned in closer.

"My dear Holmes," I said. "Afraid? Of _me?"_

"No, no," he said, embarrassed. "But there is something rather terrifyingly intimate, is there not, about confessing to another man that his words have touched you?"

This did not seem to require a verbal response, and I did not offer one.

"So you liked 'Blue Carbuncle,' " I said, for the pleasure of hearing him tell me again.

"Very much."

"You don't think I put too much...color and life into it?"

"What subject could require richer color, or more vibrant life, than the adventures of a unique and priceless jewel?"

Moments later, as we were kissing on the hearth-rug, the answer came to me all at once, the way the solution to a riddle does.

I said, out loud, "Sherlock Holmes."

"Present," he answered, merrily. 

I raised myself up on my elbows. He lay below me on the hearth-rug, his hair swept back from his face, soft shadows gathering about his lips as the flames bathed his face in their uncertain light.

"No," I said. "The only subject that could require richer color, et cetera, than a gem worth half of the Countess of Morcar's fortune...is you."

"Well," he said, after a moment's pause. "I suppose I _am_ one of the devil's pet baits."

"Certainly," I replied, "you are a grave temptation."

He drew me back down to him. I thought, as I unfastened his collar, that I had never really done him justice. I thought that if the shadow of fear could ever finally pass over us, I could paint him with all of my brightest tints, and not only scarlet. Vermilion, heliotrope, cerulean, fuschia. The brilliance of sapphire. The audacity of emerald. The sparkling evanescence of aquamarine. In another world, he could outshine any of these absurdly overvalued objects--scintillating, multifaceted, deceptively transparent, leading your gaze endlessly into his ever more brilliant depths. 

"About your story," Holmes said, at last, as we lay together by the fire. "I have only one complaint to make."

"Out with it then," I said, my tender feelings already pricked.

"Why must you always make me out a jewel-thief?"

"Oh, that's not fair."

"Your readers will think I pocketed that bauble, and deprived Peterson of the reward he is currently enjoying--"

"I faithfully recorded your promise to drop a line to the Countess--"

"--just as they already believe that the black pearl of the Borgias is rolling about somewhere amongst my beakers and pipettes and that the King of Bohemia is sending me an emerald a day. Why do you do it, Watson?" he said, sitting up in order to better provoke me. "Is it the clue to some deep-laid mystery? Is it a code? Do you secretly desire to be stolen? Shall I come upon you unawares some dark and stormy night, and slip you into my pocket, and spirit you away, and lock you up in my museum?"

He was teasing; but I knew, also, that he was asking a serious question. As he was, for once, chasing entirely the wrong scent, he deserved a serious answer.

"It's not me," I said. "It's you. You're the jewel."

Holmes's brow furrowed slightly. Literary questions, unlike most others, still had the capacity to puzzle him.

"You desire me to steal myself," he said, sitting back on his heels and fixing me with a quizzical look.

"No--it's--it's not about stealing. You are _like_ them. A concentrated point of beauty and brilliance, misprized by a dull-witted world that values only what it can multiply."

Holmes shifted position slightly, concentrating, trying to understand.

"They are like you," I repeated. "You have a...an affinity. And once you and a jewel have found each other...I hate to part you."

And what is one more lie, amongst all the others I have put in print, so many of them so much less beautiful?

The fire had burnt low, and the darkness strove now with the light. From the half-shadow, I heard Holmes's voice, low and soft and almost dreaming.

"Do you know what I would do with those jewels, if indeed I still had them?" he murmured.

"What?"

Holmes knelt upon the hearth-rug, his eyes raised to some invisible point in the middle distanc

"I would burnish all the iron in Charles's rusting diadem," Holmes said, as his hands rose into the air. His fingers danced, gently, lovingly, along invisible strands of wire. "I would lace it with the gold from that wretched coronet. I would set the thirty-nine beryls--or thirty-six, or three, no matter--in a ring around the band. The black pearl, I would fix in the center, with the blue carbuncle flashing on its left hand and a Bohemian emerald blazing on its right."

He rose on his knees, lifting his two hands into the air between us, a little higher than my head. I knelt before him and looked up at the circlet of darkness and light that that his hands described, and I swear by heaven that I saw it. I saw, poised in the curves drawn by his fingers, a circlet woven subtly of golden wire, fixing within its labyrinths many-colored brilliants from all the ends of the earth.

"And I would make it your crown."

Holmes's hands traveled slowly, solemnly, through the air. I felt his hands against my temples, cool and burning somehow at the same time. His exalted gaze met my own. He drew my crowned head toward his own. 

"My heart," he said.

I cannot put into words what I knew he meant.

"My heart," I answered.

I kissed him and in that moment I was wedded to him.

I can think of no way to explain it. 

All that Christmas day--all through the visits and the carols and the dinner--I wore that crown. He wore it too. I saw it shining about his brow whenever I glanced at him, through our little throng of visitors. I saw it when Lestrade and Mycroft between them finally tore open the most recalcitrant of the Christmas crackers. I saw, in the tissue-paper coronet that Mrs. Hudson teased him into wearing, the phantom brilliance of all the gems he had never stolen. I saw it as we finally waved them all out the door, as the cabs rattled off down the street--the Phelpses, Miss Smith, the Lady Frances Carfax--even poor humble Sutherland, her face shining with pride in a job well done, basking in the praise she had not expected me to bestow upon her. I saw them all down the street and as I turned back to him I saw the crown, still gleaming about his temples. I look at him sleeping--my husband--and I see it still.

**JWH**

**Author's Note:**

> Is this fluff? I don't know. I am unclear on the precise definition of "fluff." Is fluff required to be entirely positive? Can fluff have sad? Can fluff be intense?
> 
> I don't know the answers to any of those questions, but I have figured out something about why my Christmas stories come out weird: I don't actually like actual Christmas. I love the Christmas *season.* But for many years, my Advent ended with me saying goodbye to the young Mrs. P, going home to my family, and missing her while gradually realizing that adulthood means that nothing you really need or want can be wrapped up and put under a tree. It was a few years before I was out to my family, and many more before me and Mrs. P were able to spend Christmas together at either of our families' houses. So that may be why, when I try to write a bit of Christmas fluff, sad always gets into it. 
> 
> Nobody's commented on this, so I will: In this series, Watson has always signed his journal entries JHW. He signs this one JWH. It's not a typo.


End file.
